by Ian Hocking
‘Let me summarise,’ Castle said. She was a sharp, professional woman in her early sixties. ‘Jennifer, you used government resources without permission, created an Einstein-Rosen bridge without presidential authority, and aided the illegal entry of two other persons into a secure government property. Professor Proctor, you entered both this country and this property illegally. Those need to be dealt with first. In good time, I would also like to discover the whereabouts of John Hartfield and Saskia Brandt.’
‘Look,’ said David, ‘I could answer most of your questions if you just let me talk. May I?’
Castle sipped her tea, no milk, and raised her eyebrows. ‘You have half an hour.’
Jennifer looked on as David extracted Ego from his wallet. ‘This is my personal computer. Ego, switch to presentation mode, please. I would like you illustrate my story with pictures as you see fit, and audio and video where possible.’ He turned to the women. ‘My personal computer has been recording every step of my journey. It is equipped with iWitness software. The British police use it. It is tamperproof.’
‘I’m aware of that, Professor,’ said Castle. ‘Tell your story. This is a modern facility. It will accept communications from your computer.’
‘Very well. Ego, dim the lights. Thank you. Show Talbert Grove. This, Ms Castle, is where our story begins. The house on fire is mine.’
~
Half an hour later, Jennifer was chewing her hair. Castle would surely make a decision about their future based on her father’s testimony. She stole a glance at him. He smiled and concluded his story.
‘The time machine’s computer was hacked by my Ego unit just before we entered the cavern. Hartfield thought he was going back in time to save his own mind using the updated nanotreatment, but his insertion was altered to the precise point of the explosion. In other words, he became the cause.’
‘I see. You believe that Brandt carried out her mission after all. She sabotaged his time travelling at source. By all accounts an exceptional woman.’
‘Agreed,’ Jennifer said.
‘Your case would be aided by physical evidence, Professor. After all, even with a plausible story, we must fall back on the available facts: the computer is in your possession. You must accept responsibility for its actions. The 2014 Automaticity Act, I believe.’
David lifted a hand and let it fall. ‘Well, whatever. All I can do is provide you with the information I have.’
A new voice came from the conference speakers: ‘Excuse me. I am Ego, the personal computer involved. I am now authorised to tell you that, one year ago today, Saskia Brandt sent three hand-written copies of her testimony to legal firms in New York, London and Geneva. They are now available for your perusal.’
Castle smiled. ‘Perhaps we could also meet Ms Brandt.’
‘That will not be possible,’ Ego said.
There was a long silence. ‘Well,’ Castle said. ‘I have a meeting.’ She stood and collapsed her computer. David scooped Ego from the desk and dropped it in his wallet.
‘What happens?’ asked Jennifer.
‘For the time being, you’ll stay in guest quarters here. They are quite comfortable. I have to speak to the board about this. At the very least, we need to discuss future funding proposals, if Mr Hartfield’s absence proves to be permanent.’
‘I’ve no doubt,’ David said.
‘I will also need to speak to our legal team. However, I will advise the board that no charges be pressed. Professor, you will be expelled from the USA immediately. You will answer any charges in Britain. I will ask the board to provide legal representation for you. As a recipient of monies from the Hartfield foundation, I’m sure the board will agree that we share some responsibility for your present predicament. Dr Proctor, you will have your security clearance suspended. Again, I’m sure this will be temporary.’
Jennifer asked, ‘How temporary?’
‘Two months. Take a holiday. I hear the weather in Britain is awful.’
‘And my funding?’
‘Jennifer, you have invented a time machine. You’ll get your money.’
Castle shook their hands. ‘The guards will take you to your quarters. You can speak to nobody apart from each other. I’ll see you tomorrow. Oh, David?’
‘Yes, Ms Castle?’
‘Keep an eye on your wallet.’
~
MI5: Intelligence and Security Committee Special Report
Presented to Parliament by the Prime Minister by Command of His Majesty, January 2023
Appendix Four:
The Intelligence and Security Agencies may request the redaction of sensitive material in the Report that would damage their work, for example by revealing their targets, methods, sources or operational capabilities. The following statement has thus been redacted from the public version of the Report. The ISC finds that, while corroborating evidence exists for some claims within the statement (such as the identification of the accelerant used in the burning of 184 Tyndale Road, Oxford), the putative author SASKIA BRANDT is likely to be fictitious. Neither does the committee consider ‘time travel’ to be a credible explanation for the death of JOHN HARTFIELD, KBE.
The statement below was filed with Brélaz and Mächler, Geneva, on 29 September, 2022, and obtained by this department 30 September, 2023. It reads:
To whom it may concern:
You know me as Saskia Brandt. You, or someone you are associated with, have my friends David and Jennifer Proctor in custody. With this statement, I hereby accept responsibility for the murder of John Hartfield. I have no material evidence to offer in support of the claims herein. However, you will know by now that the Ego unit in David’s possession was able to decrypt this text, where no other machines could. I hope this establishes my bona fides. There are facts I must withhold for several reasons. However, where I can be clear, I will be so. I will describe recent events from my own perspective. My purpose is not personal exoneration—indeed, this document incriminates me—but the exoneration of my friends.
Before I continue, let me say this. There is a fundamental, human need for causation in action. It has been an unhelpful drive within myself throughout my life. For you to understand the events I will now describe, you should push this notion aside. The events have no true beginning, just as there is no true beginning for the ‘will to act’ in the human pre-motor cortex. Everything is circular. Nothing ends, or begins.
On 22 September of this year, I tracked Professor Bruce Shimoda to a Bristol hotel room, where he intended to make good on a promise of suicide made to himself as a younger man. He had become, by his own interpretation, a weak and dependent individual. I made entry into the hotel room. After a short struggle, we talked. I told him the complete version of the abbreviated story I am now telling you. And I told him he could live again. He told me about his nightmares of children with no eyes. By dawn, we were en route to Scotland. In West Lothian, I helped him infiltrate the ruined research centre and connect his mind to the virtual reality known as Onogoro. Autonomous systems monitoring the Centre sent an alert to the Home Office. That evening, a team was assembled under the command of Colonel Harrison McWhirter and dispatched to West Lothian.
I knew that McWhirter had made attempts over the years to confront David Proctor, the man he blamed for the bombing of 2003. The complexity of the situation involving Shimoda would provide him with the reason he needed to bring Proctor back to the scene of the crime. Proctor’s summons duly arrived via the Home Office and made clear that Shimoda had broken into the West Lothian Centre.
Proctor and Shimoda had grown estranged over the years. I knew that Proctor would accept the summons, but in order for him to kill Shimoda—that is, complete his suicide—I needed to motivate him sufficiently and give him appropriate means to circumvent McWhirter’s security. So I travelled to Oxford and entered his home office as he worked at his desk. I put my gun to the small of his back. Without revealing my true identity, I introduced myself as a militant NeoHuman opposed
to experimentation on artificial organisms. I gave him the two Ego computers, the instructions on how to most effectively disable Onogoro once and for all, and an overnight bag.
As Proctor walked from the house, I set fire to it. You will find traces of carbon disulphide, the accelerant I used, on the staircase. I watched Proctor rush back into the house to get something. It was the drawing his daughter, Jennifer, had made when she was a child: a stick-figure family in a house. Why did I set the fire? Proctor was about to risk everything. He needed to know there was no going back.
The reader will detect a conceptual difficulty here. Why would I feel the need to act as though I am part of the chain of causation, when I know that Proctor must go to the West Lothian Centre, and that I must travel in time? As an older Jennifer Proctor once told me: If the arrows strikes the target, the archer must have shot. One cannot have the former without the latter. All my arrows were loosed before I became aware of their flight. This is no small madness. My statement is not the place to explore my psychology, but I am stalked by these indifferent monsters. You, reader, cannot see them clearly. For me, the light of time travel illuminates them. For you, they remain shadows.
Following Proctor’s escape, other events took place as they have been described to you by him. I prepared Proctor’s motorbike and stored it along with other supplies in the shed near his ultimate landing. Then I assisted his escape. He performed wonderfully. In Proctor’s rucksack was a third Ego unit. It contained instructions for Proctor: reach locker J327 at Terminal Five, Heathrow Airport. It also contained a programmable logic controller rootkit that would compromise the Met Four Base security system, as well as those computers dedicated to Project Déjà Vu. This rootkit would enable the Ego unit to alter the temporal trajectory of John Hartfield’s journey, redirecting his body to the power plant of the West Lothian Centre in 2003.
When they put Scotty into an ambulance at Heathrow, I was there for him, as I promised. I was by his bed the following day when his phone rang. I spoke to myself. This is not as stretching as it sounds. Doesn’t everyone talk to their past selves and their future selves?
In the ruins of the West Lothian Centre, on a wall near Proctor’s old laboratory, I wrote: ‘Das Kribbeln in meinen Fingerspitzen lässt mich ahnen, es scheint ein Unglück sich anzubahnen.’ By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. Whose idea was it to write that? I wrote, after all, what I remembered reading. This is the small madness. Where does meaning come from?
Time travel or no time travel, where does it come from? Ask yourself.
The circle closes. Nothing ends, or begins. This is the last you will hear from me, and the last time I will use the name
SASKIA BRANDT
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Saskia lifted her head and licked her dust-covered lips. Her eyes were dry and raw. She looked around for Bruce and saw that he had gone. She must have lost consciousness and been unable to answer his calls. With luck, he had already been evacuated.
As much as she was scared, she was satisfied. The coincidence was extraordinary but the explanation clear. Hartfield was dead. The time machine had redirected him according to Ego’s instructions, who in turn had been carrying out her own plan.
That said, it was difficult to feel responsible.
The structure seemed solid again. Though, moments before, the walls and ceiling had ground together like teeth, they were now still. The illusion of immobility had returned. Saskia stood.
Ahead of her, southwards and away from the nearest stairway, the emergency lighting had failed. She had seen Helen Proctor fall into that blackness. Saskia clambered over. She stepped on cabling, masonry and other debris. Her intention was clear. She would save this woman’s life and repair the lives of David and Jennifer. She would give them the opportunity to avoid the pain that was in store.
But no.
Helen was destined to die and Saskia was destined to survive, just as the young woman called Ute Schmidt was destined to be raped and another woman was set to be killed, diced, and live again as data—as Saskia.
A tear cut through the dust on her cheek. She collapsed, defeated.
‘Are you okay?’
She wiped the hair from her eyes. There was a woman standing before her. It was Helen Proctor. ‘Listen to me, you’re going to be fine.’
‘You listen,’ Saskia said. ‘Your daughter, Jennifer—’
The woman frowned. ‘Jennifer?’
‘My name is Saskia. Your daughter will grow into a beautiful young woman. I am from the future—Jennifer loves you.’
Helen smiled. Saskia smiled too. She had got through. ‘You’re going to be all right,’ Helen said. ‘You’ve had a knock on the head.’
Saskia’s smile switched off. ‘No, listen to me.’
The ceiling opened. Saskia saw the steel joist fail. Fist-sized pieces of concrete began to rain. She pulled Helen to the floor and flung herself on top.
She turned to look up into the abyss. Daggers of twisted steel reinforcement were poised.
Kill me, then. Prove me wrong.
She screamed as the ceiling buckled and fell. Ribbons of metal stopped centimetres from her neck, her abdomen and her legs. The dust was as thick as smoke. Coughing, she remembered her hood and pressed the button to close it. Nothing happened. The computer was broken.
She wafted the dust away. ‘Helen, come on.’ But as the murk thinned, Saskia turned and knew that Helen was dead. The ceiling had fallen to leave her own body untouched, but a chunk of reinforced concrete had struck Helen’s skull above the eye. Her breathing was shallow.
Saskia put a hand to her cheek. ‘I am so sorry.’
She heard a man calling, ‘Helen! Helen!’
It was David. His face was young and angry. She stepped back. David looked at Saskia once, questioning, then turned to kneel by Helen. He took her hand and held it to his lips.
Saskia touched his shoulder and left. She was not destined to know him. She found a stairwell and pushed at a door marked with a green exit sign. Then she remembered. She still had to write the message to herself.
~
The door immediately to her left was hanging from its hinges. She wandered inside. It was a storage room. There were cans of spray paint on a far shelf. She put her hand among the cans, closed her eyes, and pulled one at random. She checked the label. It described security paint visible only in infra-red light. She remembered her confusion when she had read that cryptic message on the wall, seconds after McWhirter left her alone in the darkened corridor. And she remembered the envelope.
There was a door in the cupboard, and it led to a room full of office supplies. She felt dizzy with fatalism. Even the hand of the architect had not been his own.
She took a pen, an envelope, a plastic folder, and printed the word ‘Munin’ on the reverse of her ID card, which was useless in the year 2003. The word would be read in twenty years’ time. She tried to write something else—as an artistic flourish, a token rebellion—but could think of nothing to add. She sealed the envelope, addressed it, and returned to the corridor.
David had gone. Helen remained. Saskia put the envelope inside the plastic folder. She put the folder underneath the rock that had killed Helen. On the wall, she wrote, in German: By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. Then she drew an arrow pointing to the rock.
She dropped the can and ran away from Helen. Her breath stuttered with sobs. She made it to the stairwell and, from there, to the surface. The exit was at the rear of the hotel. Saskia emerged into weak daylight. A temporary field hospital had been erected on the lawn. Army ambulance crews stood by. Shocked personnel walked slowly and silently nowhere. Some cried. She saw McWhirter on a stretcher. He wore an oxygen mask. Inspired, Saskia feigned a breathing problem. An ambulance took her to a nearby hospital. Within the hour, she had escaped.
~
Night came to the woodland. The moon was large. Saskia built a fire. She remembered the life of Ute as
though it were a huge, cherished novel from her youth. One of Ute’s many foster parents, Hans, had been a Wandersmann. He had taught her how to make fire using a wooden bow drill. Instead, Saskia selected the fire-starter in the small survival kit in her flight suit. Nothing else in the suit worked. It was smashed and torn. She collected moss, dry kindling, and some logs. The fire-starter was a ferrocerium rod, down which she scraped the striking blade. The fire caught and she tended it.
The stars were closer in 2003 than they would be in 2023. The sphere of humanity—the reach of its radio and television signals—was smaller. She looked now at the trees around her. Conifer, oak, sycamore, beech and horse chestnut. She remembered them all from the life of Ute.
She noticed the pink sheet protruding from the map pocket on her thigh. The crayon drawing reminded her of David and Jennifer; a crude home; a memento. On the reverse, David had written a list headed ‘Financial Times for the Lady What Bets’. It contained a list of British prime ministers and American presidents since 2001, some British Grand National winners, and all of the football world cup winners, prefixed with ‘bloody’.
On the final page were these words:
So good luck and bon voyage!
Love David
PS If you could stick a flask of soup in the shed for when it gets chilly, I’d be much obliged! And one of those ‘space blankets’ like they have in marathons.
PPS Nothing vegetarian, mind—I’ll be weak enough as it is.
Epilogue
Westminster, London: November 6th, 2023
From his bench next to the Thames, David saw a pigeon flutter to a stop near his feet. The special committee was due to reconvene at 2:00 p.m. He had fifteen minutes to finish his lunch. He watched the pigeon fly away. The MPs had been unimpressed by his ethical choices, even with the motivation afforded by the loss of his house to fire. It would take more than Ego’s pictures and crackly audio to exonerate David from the crime of detonating that second bomb in the West Lothian Centre. David’s best intents were of little import.
